When I began my coaching career, I sought out advice from many veteran coaches as to the secret of becoming successful. I sat at the feet of many, feeling like a searcher going to the mountains of Tibet for a cosmic answer, but in reality, I went to clinics and many McDonald’s. Not unexpectedly, I received a whole lot of responses, many varied. It seemed that everyone I asked was willing to offer what helped them the most, which made a lot of sense. I appreciated all that I was given and began to sort through the pile, eventually coming upon the one I thought was best: “Whatever you do, be yourself”. This was solid and easy since I didn’t have to change anything. I found through my experiences, however, another thought that I would offer any young coach today who would come up to me and ask for the same advice: “Be whatyour team NEEDS”. I have used this little concept in all facets of my life and I have found it the more valuable one as time has gone on.

The first advice served me well in an athletic world where everyone copied the latest successful coach or program. Drill sergeant was the “flavor of the day” when I started out and you could see that style in any number of high school gyms in America. It wasn’t difficult for me to relate to this style since I grew up surrounded by it. Around me, however, I saw that there were difficulties. The problem was that this style didn’t mesh with many of those coaches’ personalities. They were putting on a false act, and players were soon able to see through that. Coaches weren’t being honest with themselves. I felt early on that being “real” was better and it was something that I kept in mind.

Getting hired as a speaker is a difficult undertaking at times, but the hardest time I had was when I was trying to convince my “own” daughter to let me speak to her high school volleyball team. The squad was getting ready to start the first round of the State tournament, so it was kind of a big deal. She was the senior captain of the team and my wife was constantly in her ear about having me come to talk to her team. “Why don’t you just have your dad talk to your team?” was her question. My daughter immediately shot back a look of “yea…right”. Finally my wife was able to break down the door and convince her to give me a chance (she has a great penchant for doing this). My daughter, in turn, had to go and convince her coach that this was a good idea. Not so easy in the adolescent world.

Now Katie’s coach was a veteran coach who had won a ton of games and was set in his ways. On top of that, he was wrapped really tightly. If you were to break down his body composition you would find it to be 20% bones and muscles and 90% nerves (I know that doesn’t add up, but he had the extra 10%). He probably the guy who the comedian had in mind when he first uttered “He would be the type of person who would make coffee nervous”. Surprisingly he said “yes”.

So it was set. I was to address the team after a practice in the “health” classroom (it had a podium and enough seats). My daughter was in the back doing her “Please dad, don’t embarrass me “dance. All fathers can relate to that body-language plea. The coach of the team said to me “Alright. You have 10 minutes” as he was doing the “Please don’t screw this thing up” dance followed by the “Oh my God, we have a good team. What am I doing?” shimmy. Internally he was probably worried about me saying something that would totally undermine what they had been doing there.